Governor Pat Quinn’s Office of Management today announced that it has selected a new law firm to serve as the state bond counsel, dumping its current counsel, Mayer Brown.

The Quinn Administration has selected the law firm Chapman & Cutler.

In a story broken by Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller, Mayer Brown’s former chairman and current partner, Ty Fahner, got embroiled in a controversy last summer over seeming to claim in a speech, which was recorded, that he had encouraged Wall Street ratings agencies to downgrade Illinois’ credit score over the state’s financial problems. […]

Now it seems that Mayer Brown, which won the contract in 2011, has paid the price for Fahner’s claims, which he later attempted to walk back – losing at $1 million in bond fees that come with being the state’s bond counsel.

In addition to Mayer Brown, Chapman & Cutler beat out 12 other firms to snag the contract.

“Welp. Sorry guys, I though no one was paying attention when I sunk our business opportunity,” says Ty Fahner, only worried about the Firm, and not the damage Ty Fahner, himself, did to the state of Illinois.

They should call Bruce Rauner to see what other states and governors are pigeons in the bonding game…

walker, I guess we could say this about almost all outside legal counsel; just clerical, NOT. There is some skin in the game regarding a tax opinion and research on IRS regs. However, the fees are outrageous and unless the State is getting a fixed fee no matter the size of the bond issue, then it is a scam. For certain is the fact that the legal work on a $20 million bond issue is almost identical to the legal work needed on a $200 million issue,but often the fees charged are ten times as much or based on issue size. Issue sized fees are a scam.

No, it comes under the category of breach of fiduciary duty. Fahner bragged about leading the effort to get Illinois bonds downgraded, costing us more money. At the same time, his firm was making money off Illinois borrowing.

You don’t want to reward that sort of behavior Jim. That could get very expensive.